Investigators: MH17 black box data consistent with SAM shootdown

posted at 2:31 pm on July 26, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

It took a while for EU investigators to get the black boxes from Malaysia Air 17 back fron Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists, and for good reason. According to CBS News, the plane experienced “massive explosive decompression” while cruising normally at 33,000 feet — exactly what one would see in a surface-to-air missile attack:

Unreleased data from a black box retrieved from the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in Ukraine show findings consistent with the plane’s fuselage being hit multiple times by shrapnel from a missile explosion, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports.

“It did what it was designed to do,” a European air safety official told CBS News, “bring down airplanes.”

The official described the finding as “massive explosive decompression.”

Investigators still on the ground at the crash site are waiting for most of their colleagues to arrive, but they’re making use of the time they have. More wreckage in the area show telltale signs of a SAM attack — the shrapnel perforations throughout the fuselage showing shrapnel shooting inward from an external blast prior to the decompression, rather than an interior blast from a internally-detonated bomb or catastrophic malfunction. The ground team still needs to find a third of the victims, a search which the large debris field — also a sign of explosive decompression rather than pilot error or systems malfunction — has made much more complicated. Getting the complete investigative team into the site will continue to be a challenge, thanks to the hostilities that have not cooled since the shootdown.

This update shows why the Ukrainian rebels were so keen to find the black boxes first, and why they originally proposed to send them to Russia rather than the EU. The data, and the wreckage itself, makes it clear that the plane got shot down by military firepower, and if that had come from Kyiv’s forces, the rebels and Russia would have rolled out the red carpet for European investigators. Instead, they tried hijacking the bodies, blocking the site, and playing keep-away with the black boxes. That behavior alone provided a presumption of guilt, and the evidence (or what’s left of it) has thus far confirmed that presumption.

Let’s give Putin a clear choice: Either he can continue subventing and enabling the bloodletting in eastern Ukraine, or we can expose the enormous global network of offshore bank accounts, dummy companies, and real estate holdings that belong to him and his criminal elite. A mafia state should be treated as such. And information should once again be weaponized as it was during the Cold War. Moscow has already gotten a head start, by leaking compromised telephone calls between members of our State Department and between Eurocrats and NATO-allied state officials.

Investigative journalism has already yielded reams of copy on where some of the Putinist wealth is hidden, and how it got there. Much of it is in EU jurisdictions, which are subject to sanctions and/or concerted American diplomatic overtures. The U.S. Treasury Department, the CIA, and the FBI all know more about Putin’s and his cronies’ billions than they say publicly.

Indeed, the first suite of sanctions that the United States passed on Russia disclosed that Putin personally held assets in a Swiss commodities trader called Gunvor, in which, Treasury stated, “Putin has investments” and “may have access to … funds.” This was newsworthy, as it was encouraging of even more thorough reporting on where the rumored wealthiest man in Europe stashes his cash. Barack Obama wouldn’t have to try very hard to convince Putin that, if he so desired, he could feed the entire Western media industry enough scoops and exclusives to shake Russia’s stock market and economy for months, if not years, not to mention set the cat among the pigeons of bickering Kremlin political factions.

No doubt this kind of economic hardball will hurt the US and EU too, but we’re beyond painless solutions now. It’s time to make Putin and the oligarchs propping him up to pay the price for Russian aggression in their own wallets.

Update: Fixed “outward blast,” which was unclear, to something more specific and accurate.

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It looks like a missile shootdown, but the conclusive evidence would be one side of the fuselage showing punctures from shrapnel entering: punctures only from shrapnel exiting leaves open the possibility of an on-board bomb explosion. It is barely possible that a missile would have penetrated the fuselage before exploding, but the overwhelming likelihood is that the warhead was proximity fused and went off ‘near’ the airplane.

we can expose the enormous global network of offshore bank accounts, dummy companies, and real estate holdings that belong to him and his criminal elite. A mafia state should be treated as such.

I agree that pressure through the money chain is going to be the most effective means to exert pressure on Putin and those who are supporting him without actually resorting to military means, however, the fact that this nation’s administration and the EU leaders have failed to do so suggests that they may have reasons of their own for not exposing the money chain that empowers Putin.

Pressuring Putin through his supporters and their wallets was always a viable means of directing traffic in the region. Yet, to date, no one has cast that first stone.

Vice President Joe Biden’s son and a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson have joined the board of a Ukrainian gas producer controlled by a former top security and energy official for deposed President Viktor Yanukovych. [… ]

Hunter Biden, a lawyer by training and the younger of the vice president’s two sons, joined the board of directors of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings Ltd. this month and took on responsibility for the company’s legal unit, according to a statement issued by the closely held gas producer.

Not that any of this would have the slightest effect on decisions in Washington DC of course.

Reporters were all over the site so where were the investigators?
Delayed in Kiev.

and playing keep-away with the black boxes.

They were the ones who handed them over, and if they had wanted to, those black boxes could have simply disappeared. This is nonsense.

sharrukin on July 26, 2014 at 2:45 PM

See folks, you are to have nothing but warm and fuzzy feelings for the neo-soviets as they shoot down innocent civilians and annex the property of their neighbors with whom they have historically oppressed and caused millions of deaths. sharrukin has spoken.

Vice President Joe Biden’s son and a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson have joined the board of a Ukrainian gas producer controlled by a former top security and energy official for deposed President Viktor Yanukovych. [… ]

Hunter Biden, a lawyer by training and the younger of the vice president’s two sons, joined the board of directors of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings Ltd. this month and took on responsibility for the company’s legal unit, according to a statement issued by the closely held gas producer.

Not that any of this would have the slightest effect on decisions in Washington DC of course.

sharrukin on July 26, 2014 at 3:20 PM

So Biden did it with his shotgun.
Actually no, it wouldn’t have the slightest effect on decisions in Washington.

Foreign media picked up the thread. The Wire’s item, headlined “Looters Stole Cash, Credit Cards, and Jewelry from Flight MH17 Crash Victims,” quoted Gerashchenko along with a second-hand account “from a photojournalist at the site” and a story in the New York Daily News. That story, in turn, cited a USA Today story written by a reporter at the site. The USA Today article, the only first-hand report in this chain of insinuation, didn’t claim that bodies had been looted. In fact, it described “credit cards and photographs carefully lined up next to each other on the wet grass.”

van Vliet expressed admiration for the recovery crews. “I’m very impressed about the work that was done over here,” he said. Citing the heat and the scale of the site, he said: “I think they did a hell of a job in a hell of a place.”

Netanyahu and all of the JOOOOOOOOS, who secretly control the world, killed the pilot and co-pilot of MH370 (they were Muslims, ya know?) and MISused MK-ULTRA, which led to the deaths of all aboard. Once the Israelis managed to land the plane at Diego Garcia – without anyone in the American military knowing about it – they were able to secret it from the world, including the Obama Administration. They put the bodies on ice, so to speak, and went about changing the tail numbers.

Why did they do this?

Because they knew that they were planning to commit genocide in Gaza on a scale worse than Hitler…and, they needed a ‘diversion.’

So, on the day that Israel launched its ground invasion, Israel, again using MK-ULTRA but more successfully this time, made the poor Russian separatists or maybe the Ukrainians (What difference, at this point, does it make?) shoot down the plane that was supposedly coming from the Netherlands.

It was an Israeli Two-fer. Make Putin look bad while diverting the world’s attention from the war crimes being committed by the Jewish Nazis to the poor, primarily, ‘Dutch’ dead. Do you really believe that any airline could be the victim of two air catastrophes in the space of a few months? Peeps, USE. YOUR. HEADS. Those weren’t Dutch, etc, bodies laying in a sunflower field. They were mainly Chinese bodies….like the people missing from MH370. What does THAT tell you? Stop being such simpletons.

Meanwhile, the Dutch and the rest of the ‘victims’ from MH17 are par-taying hard with the victims from 9/11 on a secret island in the South Pacific that is invisible to satellites and radar.

The footage many saw of ‘someone’ taking items out of a suitcase at the crash site was actually of a reporter for Sky News. He has since apologized for his actions.

Many reports have surfaced regarding the use of credit cards from the crash site as well, and investigations are ongoing, but it appears that some of the looting perpetrated at the site was done by locals with no interest or connection to either the separatists or Ukrainian military forces.

An article in The Wire, citing mostly tabloid and Ukrainian government sources, claims that locals and separatists looted the wreckage of MH17, creating difficulties for forensic investigators.

The news, which cites overheated Facebook posts from Ukraine’s interior minister, claims that the looters targeted cash, jewelry and credit cards especially. A USA Today article points that that whether or not there was systematic looting, the local authorities did not undertake a “grid walk” to catalog debris and search the site.

An image of letter was sent to The Wire as a tip, and we immediately set about authenticating it, only to find out that we could not. We now believe this is a fraudulent letter, even as it makes the rounds online and gains increased attention on social media.

In early June, Girkin issued orders to execute two militiamen found guilty of looting local residents. Vasyunin explained, “There was a warning written, I spoke with the militiamen. There were guys that were shot after they were found guilty of stealing something from locals and from shops.”

Pawn Shops Haven’t Seen Anything Out of the Ordinary

Vasyunin was able to actually visit pawn shops in the Donetsk area, and found similar answers. He spoke at length with one pawn shop owner, who asked to remain anonymous. She said she has not seen anything “particular or fancy.”

???? So any Irishman who asks for 3 fingers of whiskey at the pub is a Ukrainian Nazi now. Ever see a Navy SEAL trident?

Document Claiming Separatists Are Cashing In on Looted MH17 Items Is Likely Fake

Wekk then, that proves.. literally nothing. It’s a red herring designed to deflect attention off the obvious. That Putin, who is a neo-soviet expansionist that has been emboldened by Obamas weakness is out to carve up as much of his neighbors property as he can get and to do so he has armed his special forces and a bunch of drunk Russian thugs with, unbelievably, missiles capable of shooting down aircraft at 33,000 feet.

During the Kosovo campaign, the Russians would try to topple our cruse missiles off of their military targets onto Russian/Serbian neighborhoods so they could scream “NATO Atrocity” to the press. That’s the regard they have for the sanctity of life/property of their own people. That they were beyond looting the plane they shot down is crazy.

The people answering the cellphones and charging on the victims’ credit cards are not fake.

Resist We Much on July 26, 2014 at 4:09 PM

I would assume they are telling the truth, as I have already stated I suspect some items were stolen. Most items were not, nor was there systematic looting. The rebels seem to have tried to prevent that as much as possible. Shooting people for looting would suggest a guy who doesn’t approve of looting, so why would he then be fine with looting in such a high profile issue as this? You are letting your emotions do your thinking for you.

You are the one who has been spinning, trying to deflect, and obfuscating since Putin moved into Crimea.

I don’t make excuses for my pathetic former homeland and neither should you. If the UK shot a commercial plane out of the sky, I would condemn it.

Evidently, the same Kremlin that convinced a lot of the world that Pope Pius XII was a Nazi, the CIA killed Kennedy and the AIDS virus was created by the CIA to wipe out Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East has convinced you that Russia and its comrades are as pure as the driven snow and all Ukrainians are gay Nazis.

It doesn’t matter if these acts are perpetrated by one person on one person, or by many millions against many millions. These heinous acts are atrocities, and a war zone is rife with them.

Why?

Because people believe that they can get away with it, individually and collectively, because of the confusion inherent to an active war zone and the only thing that prevented these people from behaving in this way to date had been the fear of being exposed and restraint imposed by the knowledge they’d be punished. Remove that fear and restraint, and those who are vile with behave in an unrestrained way.

Shooting down that airliner full of civilians was obviously an atrocity of war.

These are also atrocities of war:

Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE, said observers had found identity cards and credit cards at the site on Friday and added that people were seen moving parts of the fuselage.

A rebel fighter who arrived at the scene soon after the crash told the Guardian on Friday that he and his men had found locals looting items from the site and taking pieces of fuselage to sell as scrap metal.

The question of looting was again raised on Friday after a local woman apparently posted photographs on Instagram of herself wearing makeup apparently taken from the site. The photograph was geolocated to the town of Torez, near the crash site, and the caption was: “Mascara from Amsterdam, well, from the field if you know what I mean.”

The Instagram account was later deleted after the woman received hundreds of angry messages. One user who initially “liked” the Instagram photograph confirmed to the Guardian that the account was real, but claimed the mascara was not stolen from the wreckage of MH17.

Human Rights Watch said Grad rocket attacks had killed 16 people in Donetsk in recent days, in what “may constitute war crimes”. The organisation said the evidence pointed to Ukrainian forces being responsible, despite denials in Kiev.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the United States, the UK, the EU, and the UN need to shoulder their fair share. In the vacuum of authority left on the ground in Ukraine for a week,in a contested area in a war zone, these atrocities occurred. If the United States had moved swiftly to assist in securing the crash site, or if the US, the UK, and the EU had insisted that the UN immediately dispatch teams to secure the crash site there would have been no opportunity for this looting. If the UN is to have ‘peacekeepers’ where were they?

The Wire contacted “Voices of Donetsk,” a blog and Twitter account aiming to spread information about the reality of life in rebel-occupied eastern Ukraine, to discuss the letter. Our contact, Vladimir, told us in an email statement, “I’m sure this is fake. There are many facts and evidence that the militants and locals looted luggage of victims of Boeing. But this order–explicit fake.”

The components have fingerprints that are very different. For example, the fuselages of both planes bear different chemical makeups and can easily be traced back to the source. In the case of the paint and fabric, the case is the same.

Do you understand that, if someone sideswipes your car, I can trace the paint back to the run at the factory? Resist We Much on July 26, 2014 at 5:35 PM

I’m very familiar with auto body repair. I’m not sure that the paint can be as finely traced as the day it was applied, but the manufacturer can be determined.

I would like to know who supplied the paint on both planes. I’m not wedded to the idea that wreckage from MH17 is MH370, but it can only be discounted by facts, and at this point questions are in order.

Sharrukin and Akzed, I’m sure that the two of you could save money by pooling your resources and getting a bulk discount on aluminium foil.

Resist We Much on July 26, 2014 at 5:10 PM

Akzed on July 26, 2014 at 5:17 PM

I’m not wasting my time debating a tinfoil-hatter.

Yes, it is impossible that they are the same airliners.

Resist We Much on July 26, 2014 at 5:19 PM

I get the feeling that they don’t need any tinfoil. After all, why would people employed by the GRU/Russian intelligence/modern day KGB believe anything other than the misinformation they are told to spread.
I hope everyone here knows that Russia employs an army of internet trolls to spread Russian misinformation.

It’s not just the paint. The same traces can be done on the carpets, the glass, the metals, etc.

The planes have 5 years and thousands of miles between them. The body of one plane is not going to present the same as the other forensically even if they appear, to the layman’s naked eye, to be similar.

the shrapnel perforations throughout the fuselage showing shrapnel shooting inward from an external blast prior to the decompression, rather than an interior blast from a internally-detonated bomb or catastrophic malfunction.

To clear up any confusion, the missile is designed to explode BEFORE striking the aircraft, showing it with shrapnel, similar to a shotgun blast at a bird. This maximizes the chance of hitting a highly maneuverable get fighter.

After all, why would people employed by the GRU/Russian intelligence/modern day KGB believe anything other than the misinformation they are told to spread.
I hope everyone here knows that Russia employs an army of internet trolls to spread Russian misinformation.

JacobyB on July 26, 2014 at 5:48 PM

I didn’t want to be the one to say it.
I can’t help but recall sharrukin was one of “Got to lose these elections to Obama out of conservative principles or something” group.

The planes have 5 years and thousands of miles between them. The body of one plane is not going to present the same as the other forensically even if they appear, to the layman’s naked eye, to be similar.

Moscow has already gotten a head start, by leaking compromised telephone calls between members of our State Department and between Eurocrats and NATO-allied state officials.

glad they leaked
Nov 2013 Chevron signs 50 year shale oil deal with Ukraine
Dec 2013 assist US sec state Nuland boasts of having put 5 billion in ‘democracy training’ in Ukraine, none of which was publicized in the USA

Feb 2014

salon.com
In a leaked phone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, Nuland revealed her wish for Tyahnybok to remain “on the outside,” but to consult with the US’s replacement for Yanukovich, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “four times a week.” At a December 5, 2013 US-Ukraine Foundation Conference, Nuland boasted that the US had invested $5 billion to “build democratic skills and institutions” in Ukraine, though she did not offer any details.

Feb 2014 leak by the Financial Times of Nuland saying FU to the EU for not going along on US sanctions threated against the current leaders of the Ukraine if those leaders suppressed the anti government protests

Mar 2014 leak of conversation of EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet, in which it is revealed Ukrainians killed by snipers during the last days of the Median stand off, were in fact caused not by Snipers controlled by Yanukovich, but that the snipers shot at both protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders

These leaks stand. The MSM does not wish to deal with the content of the leaks, but criticize the fact the information was made public. It was arab spring in the Ukraine.

Burisma is a private oil and gas company operating in Ukraine. Having started in 2002, the Company has grown rapidly to become one of Ukraine’s largest independent gas producers, with licences covering the country’s three key hydrocarbon basins, including Dnieper-Donets, Carpathian and Azov-Kuban.

So the Clintons were broke when they left the WH, Chelsea Hubbell “Clinton” Mezvinsky can’t make herself care about money, Biden’s kids aren’t making any money, although it looks like one of them is poised to make money in Ukraine as 0b00ba restarts the Cold War.

Isn’t that a bit fishy? Why do you say that?

Because he’s the vice-president’s son! That’s a coincidence. “This is totally based on merit,” said Burisma’s chairman, Alan Apter.

He doesn’t sound very Ukrainian. He’s American, as is the other new board member, Devon Archer.

Who? Devon Archer, who works with Hunter Biden at Rosemont Seneca partners, which is half owned by Rosemont Capital, a private equity firm founded by Archer and Christopher Heinz.
Who? Christopher Heinz … John Kerry’s stepson.

And isn’t Burisma, as a domestic producer, well positioned to profit from rising gas prices caused by the conflict? Possibly, but Hunter Biden is a salaried board member, not an investor. According to anonymous sources in the Wall Street Journal, neither Rosemont Seneca nor Rosemont Capital has made any financial investment in Burisma.

Why would a Ukrainian energy company want Devon Archer or Hunter Biden to serve on its board?

Assuming that they have been appointed to the board, the most innocent explanation is that the company wants to increase foreign direct investment and views Archer and Biden as having the experience to make that happen. Archer, for example, is a long-time investor and financier.

The most disturbing explanation is that the company is attempting to curry favor with the U.S. government by enlisting the services of the close family friend and campaign bundler of the Secretary of the State and the son of the vice president.
This has to be a hoax, right?

Hunter Biden’s appointment comes as the U.S. and much of the West has sought to help Ukraine wean off its dependence on Russia for oil and gas supplies. Last month during a trip to Kiev, the vice president pledged U.S. assistance in Ukraine’s pursuit of energy independence from Russia. Ukraine and the West believe energy independence would serve as a major leverage point for Ukraine in its standoff with Russia.

The White House insults citizens who know opening up markets for American branded global corporations is the aim, not a strategic byproduct. It should be no surprise that PEU Biden and Carlyle stand to profit handsomely. Their brazenness is shameless.

Late last night we asked if, as the Russian media had reported and only the Russian media, CIA director John Brennan had secretly visited Kiev over the weekend: “Brennan landed in Ukraine on Saturday under an assumed name and held a “series of secret meetings” with the country’s “power bloc” Interfax reported, citing an unidentified official in the Ukrainian parliament. The person who said this to Interfax in a phone talk added that John Brennan came to Ukraine not under his real name. According to some yet unconfirmed information, the decision to suppress protesters in Slavyansk, a city in Ukraine’s east, with force was advised to Ukraine’s authorities by Brennan.”

One can further admit the meeting was “secret” – if only in initial intent – not only because of Brennan’s assumed fake name (why the secrecy?) but because until Russian Interfax- of all places – had reported about what is certainly a key meeting in a nation in which disinformation and counterpropganda is not only rife but the last thread the current Kiev regime is hanging by – Brennan’s meeting was completely unmentioned by the US press.

Until today, when moments ago White House speaker Jay Carner confirmed that indeed the CIA director was in Kiev last weekend.

“We don’t normally comment on the CIA director’s travel but given the extraordinary circumstances in this case and the false claims being leveled by the Russians at the CIA we can confirm that the director was in Kiev as part of a trip to Europe,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

According to media reports, Russia has urged Washington to explain what Brennan was doing in Ukraine.

“Senior level visits of intelligence officials are a standard means of fostering mutually beneficial security cooperation including U.S.-Russian intelligence collaboration going back to the beginnings of the post-Cold War era,” Carney said.

“U.S. and Russian intelligence officials have met over the years. To imply that U.S. officials meeting with their counterparts is anything other than in the same spirit is absurd,” he said.

You know what’s absurd? Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Or YouTube clips “proving” an Assad chemical weapons attack… which was organized and executed by NATO member Turkey with the blessing of rht US. Or the same CIA director showing up in a Kiev hotel under a fake name. Or for Interfax to have more credibility than US media outlets.

You know what isn’t absurd? Speculation that just like the CIA organized the overthrow of the Yanukovich regime, which has been confirmed courtesy of the Russian secret services leaking Victoria Nuland’s very inconveient recording, so the recent escalation in east Ukraine is indeed the work of the CIA.

You know what won’t be abusrd? If and when the Russians release another recording, this time of Brennan, proving that all the latest “Russian” propaganda is once again in fact, fact.

You know what won’t be abusrd? If and when the Russians release another recording, this time of Brennan, proving that all the latest “Russian” propaganda is once again in fact, fact.

Akzed on July 27, 2014 at 1:08 AM

I have yet to hear of any Russian propaganda which is all fact. They start with a fact which is undeniably true, such as “a BUK missile was used to shoot down an airliner” and embellish that to try to prove that they had nothing at all to do with the event. Somehow, those two photographs of the BUK launcher leaving Torvuz for the Russian border and another of a similar (if not identical) launcher rolling out of a side road from Ukraine onto a Russian highway seem to indicate that everything the Russians asserted is a lie.

I hope Snowden likes his new masters. I wish him a very long stay there.